


Once We Sat In Our Kingdom

by NorroenDyrd



Series: Tall She Was and Golden-Skinned [7]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition, Elder Scrolls
Genre: Accidental Bonding, Action/Adventure, Angst, Awkward Conversations, Depression, Developing Friendships, Dissociation, Dragon Age Quest: In Hushed Whispers, Dragon Age Quest: In Your Heart Shall Burn, Enemies to Friends, Escape, F/M, Implied Eventual Iron Bull/Dorian Pavus, M/M, Some Humor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-13
Updated: 2018-06-17
Packaged: 2019-03-17 21:26:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 13,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13667598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NorroenDyrd/pseuds/NorroenDyrd
Summary: A despondent villain rotting away in a dungeon, a battle-scarred Ben-Hassrath who is beginning to doubt what he has been taught, a Tevinter Altus in exile, and a disillusioned one-time member of the Thalmor who has found herself saving another world with no hope to return home — they all have their insecurities, their fears, their things to mourn. And it seems that they may find themselves bonding over the similarities in their pain, during the escape from the smouldering ruins of Haven.





	1. Chapter 1

Even crammed as they are into a draughty Chantry, so that there is barely any space to stretch a limb and the air has turned milky-white with the collective vaporous gusts of their strained breath; even groggy as so many of them still feel, whimpering and shaking their wobbly heads and nursing sticky, throbbing burns or hastily bandaged cuts where the rock-hard claws of the red monsters got to them; even ache as their bodies do after a wild race for shelter, spurred on by the whip-like flaps of the great black dragon's wings - the people of Haven still find enough energy to find wriggle space and straighten up, wiping at their bleary eyes and following the Herald of Andraste with their awestruck gazes.  
  
She flushes and hangs her head, her copper eyes widening slightly, whenever she catches them watching her, or hears a whisper rustle through the crowd, unstoppable, broken up only by a tiny reverent gasp here and there, and gathering more and more words of praise along the way, like a tiny pebble gathers a landslide.  
  
'Look! Look at her go! She will face those evil things while we escape! She will save us all!'  
  
'That's what she does, innit? Saved my own hide out there, she did! Would have been burned to a crisp if she wasn't there!'  
  
'And me, I would of got minced into pie filling by them red-claw beasties!'  
  
'Ever grateful, my lady, ever grateful!'  
  
Their gushing seems to bring tears to her eyes - but as she purses her lips to keep a frustrated sob of protest contained, and throws her head up high, growing even taller than she already is (incredibly tall for an elf, but that is what Andraste's blessing does to you), it makes her look all the more regal. A majestic statue of gold, like them things folks have stuck all over Val Too... Val Ray... the Orlesian place - coming to life and walking among unworthy mortals. Striding along the Chantry aisle back into the broiling fiery night that they have all just escaped from.  
  
Ready to meet face to face with the leader of the red monster army - that tall, somewhat human-like... something that many of the villagers saw looming on the mountain top, seemingly tall as a pine tree, with long, blackened, sickeningly venous arms ending in hands that bear curved talons, and shards of pulsing red crystals sticking out between the few remaining shreds of its peeled-off skin.  
  
Ready to engage the thing in whatever it might end up being: combat, or conversation, or both - long enough for the survivors to sneak out up a hidden mountain path, following the lead of the wounded Chancellor, who is already waiting to set out, grasping convulsively at the shoulder of that odd, scarecrow-like boy. The one who showed up at the gates to warn them of the attack. Gangly and ragged and with each of his features - be it skin, or hair, or eyes peeking intently from under the brim of an oversized hat - paler than the next.  
  
He has been occupying himself with trying to soothe the swaying, slightly feverish man by his side - but when the tide of whispers that laps around the Herald reaches its peak point, he looks up suddenly, and speaks over the tumultuous voices, his own words ringing under the stone vaults like a rhythmic... well, chant.  
  
'Greeting, grasping, grovelling, eyes hungry to study my every feature, lips ready to catch my hands, or worse... dear gods... my feet! I am not a deity, not a superior being, I never wanted to get treated as one, never deserved to... When will they stop?!'  
  
The crowd falls silent, and the very air in the Chantry seems to grow notably colder. A frown warps the beautiful features of the Orlesian First Enchanter, who is walking closely behind the Herald - side by side with the Lady Seeker, both of them here to help Andraste's holy warrior fight her way through as many hideous red beasts as it takes to draw the attention of the pine-tall creature that commands them.  
  
'As soon as we are done with this unpleasant business, I advise you to get rid of that raggedy thing, my dear,' she murmurs, lips curling, while her hand travels forward to lightly tap the Herald's elbow in a discreet gesture of protectiveness.  
  
'It is not to be trusted'.  
  
'Hey, you said the same thing about Aira here, Iron Lady,' chuckles the fourth member of their little group: Serah Varric Tethras of Kirkwall, the author of those books that - so rumours say - are sure to win the heart anyone with enough skill to make out the letters on their pages.  
  
'Just because she does not look like a regular elf, you automatically suspected her of nefarious demonic plotting,' he goes on, with his broad dwarven hands sliding casually inside the pockets of his overcoat (which, though large in size and crafted from sturdy leather, does nothing to protect his chest), and long smart words rolling off his tongue with such an uncanny ease that quite a few villagers in the crowd cannot help gawking and moving their lips noiselessly in an attempt to mimic him.  
  
The Enchanter scoffs under her breath in mild exasperation.  
  
'I play the Game, darling,' she notes over her shoulder, while ushering the now significantly paler, stumbling Herald past the Chantry's threshold, while the Seeker holds the massive front door open with her shoulder.  
  
'Nefarious plotting is the default until the person has proven themselves worthy of trust. Airanarie has done so quite admirably; that so-called boy in the hat... Not so much. After its dramatic entrance, the thing has done nothing but dig into everyone's thoughts and air them out in public!'.  
  
'He is right, though,' Airanarie mouths, stepping outside with her eyes wide open and reflecting the red-gold flares that still engulf the horizon, where once the little cottages nestled, cozy and serene and safe.  
  
'Maybe if I die saving you all, the people will finally understand that I am not a goddess'.  
  
The brown eyes of the Lady Seeker turn even darker than they usually are.  
  
'Don't even jest that way!' she cries out, her Nevarran accent making her voice sound sharp like the edge of a falling blade.  
  
In her agitation, she almost lets go of the door sooner than she should have, and it is only the dwarf's quiet but indignant 'Hey!' that saves him from getting squashed.  
  
'We will be coming back for you!' she adds, after making certain that Serah Tethras is alive, well, and in no way flattened.  
  
'Coming back for you... Coming back for you...'  
  
The echo of these words is the last thing the survivors in the Chantry hear, before the fiery night swallows up the three ladies and the dwarf, and the door grinds shut behind them. Instantly after they are gone, Commander Cullen, tall and intimidating in his fur-adorned armour, begins organizing the evacuation, herding the villagers into some semblance of a straight line so that they can file towards the back passage.  
  
Gathering themselves up, swallowing the ache from their wounds, yelling curtly at a child or two, who are still whining about having left a favourite toy somewhere in a burning cottage, the people of Haven begin to shuffle off. There is one among them, however, who does not leap to attention at the Commander's orders; though to call him 'one among them' would not be exactly true. He has always stood out, from the moment of his arrival - but unlike the Herald,who surely stands out because of her divine blessing, he does not blend in because of the evil that cloaks him, rustles in his every step like the scales of a serpent... Or so, at least, some of the Chantry sisters would whisper, their voices sounding far more snake-like than thr footfalls of the 'evil stranger' (but please don't tell them someone said that!), as they shoved their parishioners out of his path and shook their heads in reproach.  
  
Given a wide berth even in times of calm, with no-one daring to sit down at the same table with him for drinks except that mountain of an oxman mercenary (who, as some say, is simply too 'pree-mey-tiv' to feel fear), the moustached Vint does not make any attempt to join the crowd during the evacuation. Instead, he stands quite still, with his face towards the door, his eyebrows knitted, and his back terse as an arrow string. He froze in this pose when the Seeker first uttered those last words of hers - and only snaps out of it when the oxman calls to him, turning away from his own little group that he has been guiding after Cullen.  
  
'Hey there! Dorian! What are you waiting for? Didn't you just rant about not wanting to get eaten?'  
  
'One moment, Bull,' the Vint murmurs absently, turning to one of the Chantry's smaller side doors. 'I have to go down to the dungeons. I think someone needs me to come back for him'.


	2. Chapter 2

One might think it an unbearably tedious pastime - lying on his back and looking at the low, dark-grey ceiling, while the soft drip-drip of murky water off the mould-covered mortar marks the passing of minutes. One, two, three, thousand, million. And the ceiling still remains the same. Still as damp, still as oppressive, still with the same blotches of mildew-green and black in exactly the same places, still with that crack that looks like the toothy grin of a crocodile. Unchanging - boringly so.  
  
But truth be told, at some point Alexius stopped really seeing it; just as he stopped seeing everything else around him. The walls, the floor; the matted, rancid bedding scattered underneath him; the glinting black coils of chains round his wrists and ankles; the row of bars marking the line between his dark, cold cell and the hazy veil of golden torchlight that billows beyond it.  
  
It is as though... He has detached himself from his body, from this weak, twitching husk, crushed by age and pain and more sleepless nights that he could even begin to count. Leaving behind the limp and pale remnants of his former self, he has floated off into a boundless void - where there is no grey stone, no iron bars, no rotting straw under the sprawled out limbs of a lone prisoner, stiff with bitter cold. Where even the ceaseless dripping from the ceiling has faded to silence, indicating that the passage of minutes is no more.  
  
Funny. In a certain peculiar way, he has managed to stop time, to detach himself from its flow, to rise above it, like he was intending to all along. Just like that.   
  
With no extra effort required.   
  
No late-night experiments amid the hissing and humming of many-tiered magical automata and glowing glyphs on the floor and walls.  
  
No frustrated screams and angry, cat-like swats at the reams of half-crumpled sheets with the scrawls faulty of formulae, which would send them flying all around him, the black splatters of ink blending with the yellowish-white paper to create a new blurry colour - the grey of falling ash.  
  
No yawn of green vortex opening up before him, spitting out that odd, utterly un-elflike 'elf' and the meddlesome boy Dorian, seconds after the former was supposedly erased from time and the latter foolishly leapt in after her.  
  
None of that.  
  
This time, all it took for Alexius to make the minutes drip to a halt was a broken heart.  
  
A heart that, too, he has left behind. Perhaps its jagged shards still scorch his old husk with pain, drawing more and more blood from the already warped, gnarly inside of his chest. But he can no longer feel that.  
  
There is no pain in this void that has beckoned him. No other sensations at all, for that matter... Except, perhaps, a tiny hint of... Tiredness?  
  
For he is tired. Tired of losing people. Tired of grieving. Tired of going through day after day after day with that burning sensation that would blind his eyes and crush his throat, making it impossible to breathe.  
  
Tired of making mistakes that, if he fumblingly tried to fix them, would only lead to more mistakes, each graver than the next. Tired of being ripped apart by fear and hatred and that nagging pull of madness that, as he suspects, would have gotten stronger and stronger in that nightmarish future Dorian and the... the Herald visited.  
  
Tired of living out a villainous cliché that both Dorian and himself detest so much. Tired of spewing cultist garbage that, but a few years prior, would have made him recoil in disgust. Tired of sinking to new and new depths of depravity, of agreeing to commit crimes at the whim of a dark puppeteer holding the threads of his and Felix's fate in a black-clawed fist - crimes like stealing those 'mage assets' from the Inquisition, and plotting against the Herald, and joining the hunt for those clueless Tranquil wretches.  
  
Tired of being a monster.  
  
Tired of just... being.  
  
Because really; what is the point of that when he couldn't save his son? What is the point of anything... anything but floating in the void?  
  
Sizzle. Craaack. Clang.  
  
Somewhere miles and miles away from him, on that distant, unreal plane of existence where his abandoned body still lies, a charge of magic builds up between the tips of long, well-trained fingers, with nails touched up with a dash of familiar gilded polish, now peeling off in the lamentable conditions of the rural south, where a high-bred Altus has precious few opportunities to preen himself. It builds and builds, more and more, flashing ever brighter, drawing Alexius closer and closer, back down onto the physical realm he thought he broke away from. Till finally, it lashes forth, filling the dungeon - ah yes, he is in this dank, dismal stone pocket again, looking about him with bleary, squinting eyes - right to the brim with fresh, dazzling green.  
  
A second later, the unleashed magic splits from a single splash of light into several rapidly growing vines, which wrap round the cell bars, bending them forward in a powerful telekinetic pull, till they dislodge themselves from their sockets in the slippery mortar, and rain across the floor with a metallic clamour that chases away the last shreds of the benumbing fog inside Alexius' mind, and fills the void with a splitting headache.  
  
'Hey, if you wanted to get rid of these things, you could have just asked,' a deep voice that Alexius does not recognize booms out of the billows of misty torchlight. 'I would have easily bent them apart. But eh, I enjoyed the show'.  
  
A strained, creaking push of his wooden torso into a sitting pose, followed by a few dazed blinks, reveals that Dorian, his apprentice... his former apprentice... is now standing in the blank, gaping space where once the rods of metal caged Alexius in.  
  
The boy's face is set into a stern expression, which, for some reason, makes Alexius' stomach churn violently - it's almost as if Dorian is the master now, and he is the scared student that has messed up beyond repair.   
  
Dorian's nostrils are flaring as he is forcing his breath into a calmer rhythm; and his robes are notably damp under the arms despite the cold (with the effort of casting that telekinesis, no doubt).  
  
The colossal horned silhouette that towers behind Dorian must be the owner of that booming voice. An oxman, unmistakably. An actual oxman. All the way down south. One of the Inquisitor's thugs, Alexius would wager. And he might even have an idea why the big brute has been brought down here. One would need as much crude force as possible to drag a dangerous villain to the chopping block, would one not?  
  
Excellent. Most excellent. He can't wait to return to the void again. Permanently this time. So that the tiredness can leave him be.  
  
'So, the hour of my execution has arrived,' Alexius says. 'Give me a moment, and I will gladly meet the headsman'.  
  
His voice is hoarse for lack of practice these past days, and rises and falls in pitch so sharply that he cringes at himself while pushing himself up on his flattened threadbare mattress; that grimace gradually transforms into a flickering, crooked shadow of a smile, which he gives Dorian as greeting.  
  
The boy starts, eyes turning round with bewilderment for a moment, which somewhat softens the look that made Alexius so fearful. But only for a second or two - the next thing Dorian does is roll his eyes up impatiently.  
  
'Please!' he strides deeper into the cell, wringing his hands slightly.   
  
'Now is not the time for dramatic self-flagellation! Haven is burning! Your precious master has arrived and levelled the place to the ground; everyone is evacuating'.  
  
Ah. So the storm clouds have burst then.   
  
Now that Alexius thinks of it, there might have been some commotion up above, reaching him in muffled waves, like a tide crashing on the shore in some foreign land, as far away from him as his northern home.  
  
He knew this would happen, at some point. He knew the Herald's triumph would not last. Nothing lasts. Not in this world.  
  
That is simply not life's way; life's way is to tease you with visions of happiness and contentment, to lull you into a false belief that everything is in its place - the lark on the wing, the snail on the thorn, the Maker in his heaven and all that rot - and then, to take it all away; to chew you up and spit you out. Spent and tired.  
  
He is not even gloating now. He does not have the energy for that. Much less for some foolish escape plan Dorian is foisting on him. Not that it will ever work.  
  
The Elder One will crush the Inquisition, no matter how far their daring little throng runs, no matter in which draughty mountain crags it hides. And since he is not being executed, he might as well stay here.  
  
'I see then,' he sighs, falling back on his bedding.   
  
'All the people you've saved, all the acclaim you've gathered... It has all been for nothing. The Elder One still prevails. Maybe if he reaches me, he will finally kill me for my failure... Or maybe I will expire slowly of cold and starvation. Not the kindest fate, but...'  
  
'All right, I have heard enough of this,' Dorian snaps, now hovering inches away from Alexius - and motions to his horned companion.  
  
'Bull, my good man, will you kindly use these beefy arms of yours and haul him out of here? Telekinesis would be too much of a hassle'.


	3. Chapter 3

Dorian may not have been... entirely truthful during that conversation he had on the shore of the Haven lake with the Herald - with Aira, as she had asked him to call her after their misadventures in the alternate future.   
  
On that day, he remembers slipping away beyond the outskirts of town for a little walk - yes, sounds awfully trivial, and not really characteristic of his refined self, born and bred amid the intricate masterworks of ancient architecture rather than dreary open landscapes drowning in crystallized water. But he needed to kill time somehow before the Inquisition's resident mercenary crew gathered up at the tavern, where he had been invited to share a 'coupla brews' with them. Apparently because their horned leader had noticed that Dorian was 'moping about kinda lonely', and thus offered a chance to get to know himself and his men a little better.  
  
'You have been helping out,' he had told Dorian, ramming his stub-fingered hand into his back to that he almost spat out his own teeth (was that supposed to be a genial fist-bump?).   
  
'It's not fair that people treat you like shit just because of where you are from. Come sit with me and the Chargers next time. It will be fun'.  
  
It promised to be a novel experience, drinking in the company of others - loud, boisterous, friendly others.   
  
Ones who would not demonstratively edge away from him, cupping one hand protectively over their mug (as though his very breath could poison the already questionable swill within), with their palm pressed down so hard that the creamy soft white froth began squeezing out between their claw-like fingers.  
  
Ones who would not squint at him in distrust, their scrutinizing gaze always on him as if he were in a gallery (a very grimy one, permeated with faint notes of out outhouse odour) full of those pretentious paintings where the eyes of some fat bob-tailed steed and its long-faced rider follow the viewer as he walks back and forth across the polished floor.  
  
Ones who would not spit out things like 'Hey, wasn't this Vint with the old one? The one that kicked Arl Teagan out?'; 'I heard these godless northerners even killed him, and the Arl that came back home ain't Teagan at all, but an abomination! I mean, look at how much he's changed!'; 'Yeah, I bet if you shake this slimy little mage a little, the poor Arl's skull and guts will fall right outta this fancy robe of his!'. Not even bothering to lower their voices, making him want to hurry up and gulp down pint after pint of the tangy dark liquid, so that the inebriation might spin him off as soon as possible. Into the void, as it were.  
  
A novel experience indeed, drinking with southerners that would not judge him. He was quite looking forward to that. But first, he had to wait for the Chargers before they finished their training session - and as staying on the move was the only way to hammer that beastly southern cold out of his system, Dorian soon found himself ambling off along the silvery rim of the lake, kicking absently at the clumps of snow crystals. And that was when he bumped into Aira.  
  
She was just coming downhill, from the little clearing that - again, according to the voices in the tavern - she had taken to visiting right after the Inquisition resolved the Redcliffe fiasco. And those visits had not always gone unnoticed by the Haven folk.  
  
Dorian obviously will never stoop as low as take all the idle tongue-waggling at face value. But with the chaff like 'Andraste comes down to talk to her on yon hill!' out of the way, he thinks that Aira might have travelled up the white-blanketed slope over and over again (what a trial, having to endure the horrid damp feeling of snow clogging up in your boots and then thawing in there!) in order to pray. To... whatever gods she is supposed to worship. The... Dalish deities maybe?   
  
True, she is not what Dorian would imagine what a Dalish would look like - what with that towering, Qunari-like height of hers, and her metal-tinted skin and reddish eyes with yellow whites. But then again, as a Tevinter, he is not exactly well-equipped to make judgements about the physiology of elves who are not the half-starved, jittery slaves waiting with baited breath for his peers to either strike them in anger or lazily dismiss them, satisfied with the task performed.  
  
For all he knows, Aira's appearance traits might have been peculiar to the elven race before... before humans happened. Maybe generations of slavery have reduced the once proudly tall, golden-skinned magical beings to the elves of today - and Aira, through some miracle of lineage preservation, represents what sort of people may have walked beneath the leafy canopies of the Arlathan of old. A chilling thought - but (a miracle yet again!) she does not hate him for that.  
  
In fact, on that day that Dorian is trying to recollect, as he hurries after Bull up Chancellor Roderick's secret path, she hastened to join him on his walk the moment she saw him. Her prayer had left her in a bit of an emotional upheaval: there were ruddy spots on the tip of her nose and the jutting angles of her cheekbones, and when she called out his name, her breath caught in her throat so sharply that it can't have been with the exercise alone.  
  
This left Dorian at a bit of a loss. Incredibly brilliant as he is, he has never been very good at untangling emotions, neither his own, or those of others - but luckily, he did not have to shuffle about in confusion for too long, as Aira gave him a clear enough cue.  
  
She walked swiftly along the rickety wooden pier that loomed over the ice on two rows of dubiously sturdy supports, with a cluster of icicles framing its edges like messy white sideburns and beard. Grinding her heels to a halt, she seated herself down abruptly, her boots shattering quite a few of the icy beard bristles as she dangled her feet over the edge. Dorian followed her example, cautiously lowering himself onto the sleek rimy wood at a sizeable distance from the elf - and that was when she clasped her hands on her narrow chest and blurted out with a shudder,  
  
'Can we... Talk? It is supposed to help, isn't it?'  
  
Dorian made a very vague Hmm-ing noise (again, she was going a bit beyond his area of expertise there), but did not shift away or try to get up.  
  
And so talk they did.  
  
About the horrors they had seen together in the last moments of the year that cannot be allowed to repeat itself - the year when the Venatori and their Elder One had conquered Thedas.  
  
About how the sky had vanished, gotten sucked into a gigantic  green whirlpool - an endless sickly spin of electrified, crackling arcane energy, carrying mismatched chunks of ruptured soil, and bits of masonry, and long-dead skeletal trees, and anything else that may once have belonged on the ground; how every now and again, a venom-shaded lightning would strike, demons skittering in all directions from the place where it hit what little remained of the solid surface underfoot (neither earth nor floor, for the most part, but a layer of sticky, lumpy... something, like splashes of molten glass).  
  
About how the very castle that the two accidental time travellers had stumbled through seemed to be dying, gulped down bit by bit by the greedy vortex; how the searing gusts of electric wind would make a low, pained groan, and then a stifled hiss, as they travelled through the gaps in its crumbling walls; how dark, stagnant water would pool in its dungeons, reflecting the feverishly hot aura of the infected crystals that jutted out of every crack, turning the sloshing muck into a river of blood with their raw red glint.  
  
About how much Aira's companions had changed, the same red crystals having been planted forcibly into their bodies and grown there, lining the mangled insides of their lungs and throats and sockets, which would often make them cough and draw ragged, brittle breaths, and look wildly around them with bleeding eyes, set deeply onto their waxen, purplish faces and surrounded with inky black circles of moist gangrenous flesh. And how a no less startling change had befallen Felix, Dorian's... well, only remaining friend from back home, to be quite frank; how his father's insane 'research' had conserved the last tiny slivers of life in a body long since claimed by the Blight, turning him into a mindless ghoul, stitched together out of snatches of disease-ploughed flesh, no longer even capable of standing on its own two feet.  
  
It was at that point of their reminiscences that both Aira and Dorian gave a violent start and discovered that they were patting each other awkwardly on the forearm, in an imitation of one might call a comforting embrace (yet another phenomenon vastly beyond Dorian's expertise - and Aira's as well, for that matter).  
  
'So... um...' thoroughly embarrassed by this gesture, the elf balled her hand into a fist, which she then drew back from Dorian, and squeezed the words out of herself, trying to bring the conversation to a close.  
  
'Have you visited your mentor... Alexius... since we came back?'  
  
Ah, yes - Dorian recalls smiling wryly to himself. No more appropriate conclusion than a nod to the man who would have brought that nightmare to life.  
  
'I saw him before your men locked him up,' he sighed, with his eyes cast down at the icy crust below the pier.  
  
'He seemed despondent. Broken. Not at all the man I remember. Still, I hope there is some of that man left... Deep down somewhere. For Felix's sake'.  
  
And that was where he was not quite truthful. It is not just for Felix's sake that he has been telling himself that maybe, just maybe, a tiny likeness of the Gereon Alexius he once studied under is still curled up within this husk Bull is dragging uphill (perhaps asleep, like the man himself seemed to be when they came to his cell).   
  
It is for his own sake too.  
  
Selfish, he supposes, like so many other of his wants and desires - longing for a chance to somehow, some day relive the roseate scenes from a better time.   
  
A time when he was a young, ambitious student of magic, voraciously devouring every immense tome laid out before him on his desk, heavy as a boulder and peppered with pictures of sigils and spell circles and potion bottles. While Alexius, in turn, was his proud mentor, a steady, reassuring presence at Dorian's side, ready to guide him towards one glowing success after another - and also to patiently listen to him rave when he showed another side of himself, drunk, lost, and bitter at the coldness of his family. And Felix was there with them too, a student of mathematics rather than magic - but still accepted and encouraged by his parents, treated not as another gilded name to add to the genealogical tree of the grand old Altus Houses Alexius and Arida, but as a... a person, free to live a life of his own choosing, free to speak his mind, and to think and to dream and to laugh without holding back.   
  
Maker, it was at their home that Dorian first realized that parents and sons were allowed to have bonding moments beyond the latter reporting his academic success to the former. He thinks they were having dinner all together, and Dorian said something seemingly innocuous, like 'lemon juice'... And then Alexius and Felix froze up over their plates - the little greenish glass ones, chiselled into the shape of fern leaves... why does he even remember these pointless details... As a few moments passed, both of them kept steadily growing redder and redder in the face, biting into their lips to hold in a bout of laughter; a struggle that did not last long. Eventually, Alexius slammed his palm into the table, letting out a wheezing guffaw, while Felix buried his face in his father's shoulder, hiccupping with tears in his eyes.  
  
Noticing Dorian's expression (which must have been ridiculously flabbergasted), Alexius' wife, Lady Livia, chuckled softly, and said to him,  
  
'Ah, don't mind these two, dear. Must be another one of their inside jokes'.  
  
Back then, Dorian's heart slumped downwards a little in his chest (he does not think there has ever been much joking at his own dinner table, except for the drunken slurs his mother sometimes tossed into his father's face, and then laughed at all by herself, the sound coming out barking and mirthless). But as he settled into the Alexius household, he got a bit of a taste of that unfamiliar life they had; he was touched, albeit fleetingly, by that oddly uplifting spirit of a family where the parents do not hate each other and the child is not expected to live up to an impossible standard.   
  
It would have been so... wonderful to see some of that spirit return, to watch its bright glimmer dance in Alexius' eyes again... But ah, whom is he fooling. That is not meant to be.  
  
Despite all of his selfish hopes, that life is gone forever. Felix is doomed to die, and Alexius... He cannot even bear looking at him.  
  
It was bad enough when Dorian had to face him in his cell, crushed and weary and waiting for death; now, he has to endure braving this stupidly steep, stupidly narrow path, while the mounting snowstorm is using his gloriously chiselled face for target practice, side by side with an Alexius-shaped wraith that, once carried out of the building under Bull's arm, has now been lowered into the snow and is crawling dumbly ahead, face blank, limbs moving obediently whenever Bull directs them to.  
  
Once they were out in the open, Bull snatched a rock out of a nearby pile of rubble (and Maker knows, there are a lot of those round Haven now, the whole place looking like a once neat chest of drawers that has been ransacked... only with more blood and fire than is usually necessary when you are frantically rifling through your belongings). Weighing it thoughtfully in his hand, he ordered Alexius to stand still, and struck with all his might at the chains between his ankles, denting the weakest link till it could be pried loose.   
  
Bull then repeated the procedure with Alexius' manacles as well, two empty, glazed-over eyes watching him indifferently all the while, trapped in a tangled net of deep facial lines - tokens of past anguish rather than age.   
  
This has allowed the escaping (if he can be called that) prisoner some freedom of movement - but the shackles themselves still remain clasped tightly over his hands and feet, because one would need a jailer's key to get them off. And the rattling chain links that still dangle off them only serve to intensify the wraith impression.  
  
This wraith, this miserable defeated villain, is all that if left of Alexius - Dorian is certain of it now. Whenever, lips twisting in pain, he does attempt to glance at it through the clammy stream of snow, in hopes to see the man he knew, he finds nothing. Nothing that could remind him of his mentor. His friend. His... his...  
  
Kaffas. He has lost not one father but two. While both of them still remain alive - one back home in Tevinter, the other right here, a ghost in the snowy night.  
  
Felix - the poor, sweet, brave Felix - was right when he said those words to him in the Redcliffe Chantry.   
  
There are worse things than dying.


	4. Chapter 4

While they were down there beneath the Chantry, most of the Inquisition has already managed to move out, a black river of people streaming uphill.   
  
Impossible thing for a river to do, yeah, but in Bull's mind, the word still fits what he saw. He only caught a glimpse of that upward river's last drops, though, Dorian had waited for the bulk of the refugees to clear out before he swerved off into the dungeon to fetch the older Vint - and now, the three of them are steadily falling further and further behind, because the wind keeps growing stronger, bringing with it enough snow to bury the path, and blowing into their faces with a stubborn force that makes them slip back down the ice-caked slope two steps for every one step forward.  
  
Quite a whopping blast, this howling storm has gathered. Something you could admire, sort of... Just look at the way it bends the thick tree trunks, which sway on either side of the path like they were flimsy blades of grass in a rolling field; or at the way it whips up those giant glimmering clouds off the snow drifts, tracing loopy shapes high above ground against the dark-grey sky. Pretty impressive for a stream of cold air!  
  
Even Bull finds this nature's badassery hard to withstand - to say nothing of the two humans that tumble about in the whiteness somewhere behind him. Dorian is making an effort, at least - but the old man... Bull would bet he secretly wants to just throw up his arms, let the wind knock him off his feet, and roll back into the snow, lying still until he turns into a Vint-shaped popsicle.  
  
Which would not have been much of a loss, as far as Bull is concerned; the Inquisition would most likely have executed the guy anyway, if a dragon hadn't arrived and done that staggering mass destruction thing its kind are so amazingly good at. Ahem. Anyway.  
  
If the old Vint decided to curl up and die right here and now, Bull would not have shed a tear. But Dorian seems dead set on keeping him alive (hm, could be a good pun) - and Bull has begun to like Dorian, soaked in Vintness though he is.   
  
And it's not just because he is pretty - no, the pretty ones are usually more likely to stab you in the back and bat their eyelashes coyly while they are at it. It's because he really is trying to do better than those freaky cultists that are so much fun to slice up in one axe swing. And who's to say, maybe he thinks the old Vint can do better too if they kick him strong enough. Bull can't be a judge of that; he has not known him for nearly as long as Dorian has.   
  
All that Bull can do is plough on through the rising tide of snow, his deep, broad tracks serving as a path for the two Vints (who sometimes sink into this cold white dough-like stuff up to their necks, where Bull just trudges waist-deep). And keep his battle axe on the ready in case the old guy decides to go back to his manic cultist cackling and earns himself a quick head chop.  
  
There is one thing Bull does know when it comes to the old man. It's that he gives him a very weird, and very strong sort of feeling - this damn old mage... Saarebas, he supposes he ought to call him.   
  
Saarebas. Dangerous thing. It's easier this way, when you deal with evil assholes. Have to kill someone like this, for bringing demons into the world, or melting people's faces off with fistfuls of blaring white lightning, or splashing fountains of blood all over the place? Just grit your teeth, glare the bastard in the face, and chant under your breath, 'It's a thing. It's a thing. It's a thing'.   
  
And things are no big deal to carve through, hoist up on your weapon (sinking it halfway in like a knife into a dripping, juicy leg of veal), and then toss down at your feet, freeing the steel up, and idly watching the blood run down the grooves along the blade. No big deal at all, despite all those gargling and ripping and cracking noises they might make. They usually deserve that, too - having their death treated like you'd treat the breaking of some lifeless object. And sometimes, the comparison is even way too flattering, because most objects make themselves useful, while demon-summoning Saarebas serve no real purpose except having their head paraded around on a blood-smeared pike for a bit for shits and giggles.  
  
But this Vint... He might not be as much of an evil asshole, for one thing... And for another... As Bull keeps looking back to check if his human tagalongs are still shoving their butts through the snow, he sometimes catches the old guy's eyes: they are dark and tired, like every moment of this trek up the mountainside lasts a thousand years for him; and deep within them, there is this sickly heaviness that Bull knows all too well.   
  
As if there is a rock, lodged inside his skull, huge and deformed and taking up all space, crushing his brain and pressing at his eyeballs from behind, preventing him from seeing straight, walking straight, thinking straight. While a similar stone, coarse and cold, is rolling in the kadan of his chest, grinding at his heart and lungs until he can barely draw a breath without feeling deathly tired, and wishing for a fucking void to just open up and swallow him whole.  
  
Bull can't really tell why he is so certain - but he is. The old Vint has it, in some form or other. That bloody affliction that would have crippled Bull's own self, if the reeducators hadn't set him straight. The plague of Seheron. Asala Taar. Soul sickness.  
  
If you reason logically, this does not make the old Vint all that worthy of sympathy.  
  
Bull got his sickness from hacking his way through the bloody maze of a battlefield day after day. From breathing in that darkened air that had long since stopped being air and instead turned into a dense mix of different kinds of smoke (burning grass and trees, burning campsite tents, burning bodies). From seeing his comrades, people he knew, people he had joked with just a couple of hours before, people whose voices would ring on at the back of his head for months since, falling to the ground, felled by a Vint's flame blast or the rapid, merciless strike of a Fog Warrior, turning, just like that, in a single heart-piercing flash, into a useless flesh sack that needed to be left behind for the birds to pick at, long, glinting beaks burrowing into their wide-open dead eyes like they were berries... Because the Qun teaches that, once someone's breath stills and someone's mind goes black, they stop being themselves, and it is pointless to mourn them.  
  
And the Vint - he is feeling sick because, uh, his freakish plans fell through? Oh, and, as far as Bull can gather from what he's seen, this other Vint that hung about Redcliffe - Dorian's friend, and the old guy's son - is going to die soon. Must have hurt him bad, given how some of the folks outside the Qun stick by the kids they've bred. But even so, that's nothing like what Bull has been through. If you reason logically.   
  
And a Ben-Hassrath should be logical - in theory. Nothing but cold, clear-cut lines of thought. No special treatment for anyone. No emotion clouding your judgement.  
  
And yet, there he is. Shuddering from something stronger than the cold, and sighing in sympathy, and quietly shaking his head whenever he turns back towards the old Vint. Yeah, very weird feeling, all of this.  
  
Bull's musings are interrupted by a sharp crunch of snow under footfalls that are neither his nor Dorian's nor the old guy's. Many footfalls. Accompanied by low grunting noises that are very definitely not human.  
  
All three of them whip around on their heels - even the Vint with the Asala Taar seems to grow a little less indifferent to everything for a second there. And in an instant, the billowing rolls of the snowy dark ahead of them turn into the likeness of one of those (badass!) lizards that are all chubby and smooth one moment and the next, when they are threatened, bristle all over with razor-sharp spikes that slip out from underneath their skin.  
  
In this case, the spikes that emerge out of the night, swiftly and noiselessly, are red in colour, with hardened, polished sides like gemstones. Except gemstones don't glow from within and don't appear to breathe all on their own - each breath scorchingly hot and reeking of infection.  
  
Bull flexes his shoulders and plants his feet deep into the snow, lifting up his axe. Shimmer as they do, the crystals are the only things he is seeing so far, jutting out of the leaden fog. But he does not need to see anything else to know who - what - is bound to follow after.   
  
Dorian, too, tensens, orbs of magic squished in his grasp like a couple of shiny, soft, purple... Fruit. Yeah.   
  
He quickly slips out of Bull's field of view, but by the source of the snow's shrill creaking, it is not that hard to figure out that the mage is moving closer to his blind side, shielding it from the advancing crystals. That's... kinda thoughtful of him - and Bull cannot resist showing his appreciation with a small smirk; right before he gathers himself up, and launches his whole huge self at the creatures he knows are lurking in the dark of the storm.  
  
He topples about three or four of them in one blow. Snarling, shambling husks that once were humans. You can still see the bloated growths that are supposed to be their heads; and the four twisted limbs that look like they have been dipped into bubbling, red-hot molten metal; and even some shards of Templar armour, lodged in between misshapen chunks of bleeding red crust.  
  
But other than that, they are nothing but walking, moaning heaps of burning crystal, shaking all over with badly contained, feral malice, that itching urge to unleash your full strength and turn everyone you come across into fleshy pulp; all the nightmarish stuff reeducators warn you about. Now, these - these require no convoluted convincing to think of as things. Easy as bloody pie.   
  
It takes some hefty axe swinging, but Bull promptly gets to the few parts of the red things that are flesh rather than crystal, and dices them up till the creatures stop shrieking and sloshing about in the pinkish thaw that has pooled underneath their lumpy bodies. Job done. These were things. These were things. These were things.  
  
This is not the last of them, however. There are more coming, clambering uphill after Bull and the two humans; a bunch of stragglers that must have split from the main red horde and sniffed out this secret escape path. If any of them are allowed to live, they might alert the entire army of corrupted Templars - and then the Inquisition will be doomed.  
  
'We must not let these buggers past us,' Bull growls, looking up from the heap of crystallized corpses and planting his foot firmly into the face of one of them, the red shards crunching under his weight. 'They all die right here'.  
  
'You don't have to tell me twice, my friend,' Dorian reassures him.  
  
Bull tilts his head to be able to see him - and discovers that the mage is already in the middle of twirling his hand in that showoff-ish way of his, threads of light spinning round his wrist and fingertips at a breathtaking speed, crisscrossing and looping and clashing at sharp angles, till bam... There is a whole damn sigil flying about in the air before his face, traced in white and blue and magenta, buzzing with pent-up energy - which explodes with a firework-like dazzle, blowing the face of the nearest red creature clean off.   
  
One more body for the pile - and then, two, and three, and four, since the old Vint has decided to join the action, raising his arms to command the snowdrift at his side to sculpt itself into a perfectly polished spike, as tall as Bull is broad, and with a spearhead tip that impales a couple of red things, before continuing to grow, apparently really determined to prod at the fuzzy grey underbelly of the overhanging stormclouds.  
  
Shit, the Qun would not approve of Bull saying this - but they are badass! The both of them! And look: after he does his snow trick, the old guy turns to search Dorian's face, as if silently begging for his approval... And they smile at each other! And what a bright smile that is! Bright enough to melt off at least a tiny bit of the Assala Taar that clings on to the old Vint like black slime.  
  
Bull just cannot help feeling uplifted as he watches the two of them - a very foolish, irrational thing, as he learns a fraction of a moment later, when an arrow zooms out if nowhere, and squelches deep into Dorian's side.  
  
A fucking red Templar archer has made use of their distraction to fire a clear shot. And as Dorian falters and sags down into the snow, wincing in pain and gasping for air in abrupt, squeaking even, intakes of frosted breath, Bull can swear that the thing is actually gloating, its uneven rotting teeth letting through beams of crimson light from the crystals that grow at the back of its throat. And it has brought a friend to gloat with it, too. The largest creature yet, towering even over Bull, with its only somewhat human feature being a pair of beady bloodshot eyes, lodged into a crack between two ridges of red crystal.  
  
A hulking mound like this would be a real challenge to take down, especially with that pesky archer skulking about at its heels.  
  
'Kaffas,' Dorian mutters weakly, deliberately looking away from Bull, who has rushed up to him to get him to his feet (the stupid blighter must be ashamed of how hard he is clinging into Bull's arm... as if that even matters when there is a dark red spot marring his robes and a bunch of arrow feathers sticking out between his ribs).  
  
'Now that is a big one...'  
  
The old Vint, who has been tinkering about with a half-transparent greenish barrier, to deflect any other arrows that might follow, clears his throat to draw attention to himself.  
  
'I will deal with it,' he says; his voice is loudest than Bull ever remembers since that time when he yelled at the boss that she should never have existed.  
  
'You, Qunari - grab Dorian and get him to safety! Do not disturb the arrow until you reach a healer, or he will bleed out! Do you understand me? I will make sure these... monsters do not follow'.  
  
'Yeah, I understand you,' Bull huffs.  
  
Just as he was beginning to like the guy, he has decided to talk to him with the slowness of someone addressing a  village idiot.  
  
'I am not a bloody savage'.  
  
'Wait!'   
  
Dorian lurches anxiously in Bull's arms, his nails scraping his skin.  
  
'You are not really agreeing to this, are you?! You...'  
  
Just as the barrier flickers off into nothing, Dorian strains his neck to look past Bull at the old Vint, and something in his voice snaps.  
  
'Gereon... You old bastard... You will get yourself killed!'  
  
The 'old bastard'  jerks his shoulder in a small half-shrug.  
  
'Good,' he says simply - before magicking up a wall of flaring, stinging lightning between himself and Bull and Dorian, to make sure they do not follow.  
  
The restless nails that travel along Bull's forearm turn to claws, breaking deep through to reach his flesh. Bull closes his eye and, not quite caring enough to stop and think what the Qun might say about it, cups his hand over the top of Dorian's head, softly stroking his hair.  
  
It makes sense that the old guy did that. When you've got the Asala Taar, there are two cures that come to mind first and foremost. Either to destroy yourself or to reach out to the reeducators, who will do the destruction for you and reassemble you out of the shattered pieces. And Vints don't have reeducators - not of the sort that helped Bull, at any rate.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is another one of those chapters that focus on emotions rather than action (a.k.a. the reson why my writing sucks according to some experts), but I felt like I had to provide insight into Airanarie's character and how she compares phenomena from Thedas to those from her native Tamriel. And also to round up the Resolution story by showing how much it hurt her to seal the Breach.

There is one thing Airanarie does, as soon as she is able. As soon as she gets a moment to catch her breath, after drawing out her confrontation with that lich-like 'Elder One' being to the utmost, and then leaping down a hole amid piled-up debris, while an avalanche of her own making slapped its huge, clumsy white hands over Haven. As soon as she makes her landing into the heavy, blue-tinged darkness of some underground passageway, which must have been opened up when the unstoppable rush of snow upheaved everything in Haven.   
  
She is not quite certain -  but... She may have hit her head on a loosened stone on her way down, adding up to the bump from being hurtled at a trebuchet by the Elder One, and lost her senses for a while. It is rather hard to tell, for her most recent memories are somewhat jumbled, and even the very thought of trying to reassemble this scattered mess gives her a sickly headache. There does appear to be a sizeable gash across her scalp; she can sense the stinging when she moves her facial muscles, and the skin of the entire left half of her forehead and cheek is uncomfortably moist, the wispy down caking together with what can only be blood.  
  
But still - regardless of whether or not this bleeding strike has caused a blackout, there is one thing that she does as soon as she blinks some of the blue pall away, and sees her own hands, pushed forward to support her body - and then, moving her gaze upwards, also spots the age-worn walls and trickles of snow that draw fuzzy white lines from the passage's cracking ceiling to its corners.  
  
There is one thing... And that thing is to weep.  
  
She has always been a weepy sort, no matter how hard her father worked to squeeze the habit out of her when she was a child.   
  
One of his favourite tactics was to stand behind her in a public place, his hand hovering over her shoulder, and subtly prickle her skin with small doses of Destruction magic - to see if she had willpower enough not to disgrace her superiorly bred family by going into a tearful meltdown. That seldom worked - but the more hot, opaque wet mist built up in Airanarie's eyes, the stronger the magic stung at her skin; and eventually she did know better than to cry when there are other people watching. Be those the Thalmor, back in Tamriel, their ranks closing in tightly around her like a cage of black and gold, their pursed lips hard like bits of metal wire; or the Thedosians, gazing up at her with glimmering, puppy-like eyes, their overflowing adoration no less daunting than the haughty judgement of her Altmeri peers.  
  
When she is alone, however... Now, that is a different story.  
  
When she is alone, she can exhale with the full power of her lungs, and let the tears flow, for as long as she needs, till she tires herself out, swimming off on the prickly, salty waves into a comforting void where nothing weighs upon her any longer.  
  
After she deserted from the Thalmor and started squatting in an abandoned cottage among the ancient, gnarly, moss-bearded pines of Skyrim, she would sometimes start crying randomly, in response to some thought or other, tears streaming down her upturned face as she walked through the woods, all by herself.  
  
And all by herself as she is now as well, tossed into darkness underneath the dead white waste that used to be Haven, she arches her back slightly, pressing her body into a ball: her hands are still flat against the ground, and her face is now resting between them, with her lips barely grazing the icy floor of the passageway, and her bleeding forehead resting over the glazing of rime, which somewhat soothes the hot pulse that has whipped itself into a frenzy within her temples and between her meric brow ridges. She freezes in this pose for a sliver of a moment - and then finds herself choking on one tremendous sob after another.  
  
She weeps for Haven, for this wonderful little village that she could always return to after blundering through the bright, confusing, unfamiliar world beyond Tamriel. Once homely and hospitable like some enchanted hamlet out of a Nordic book, with chubby, slightly slouching houses wrapping themselves into fdowny white shawls; and now smothered with not a shawl, but an immensely thick, heavy, unliftable pall of the avalanche, with clean-picked carcasses of the ruined buildings sticking out in places, like phalanxes of skeletal fingers, lifted towards the cold uncaring nocturnal sky in a desperate silent plea to let them out.  
  
She weeps for the people she could not reach amid the very first blast of smoke and fire - masons and carpenters and smiths, who flung themselves blindly in front of the rampaging dragon, just like (as her few Tamrielic friends would once tell her) the Skyrim folk have a habit of flinging themselves in front of Alduin's brood. Angry beyond all reason, because some lumbering winged reptile dared befoul what they had worked to hard to build, shaping every carved wood beam, every protective wall with the patient care of a mother nursing her child. So angry that they could not breathe, or see, or even process with their throbbing, noiselessly screaming minds that their raised fists and tools would be no match against the gigantic scaled paws and a maw full of fangs, packed tightly like the sharpened fence around Haven. That truth only dawned upon them when it was too late, when the dragon talons stomped all over them, and the fence-toothed maw leered wide open, and the hot waves of crackling red and purple flame hammered at their chests and skulls, as if they were now the crafting materials melted up and reshaped by an artisan... Reshaped into sculptures of hardened ash that did not react with but a twinkle of red when a shivering, anxious Airanarie staggered among them, casting and casting the Detect Life Tamrielic spell till she could not feel her hands.  
  
She weeps for the creatures that flooded the streets like a gush of red lava somewhere in the smoking crags of Morrowind. She weeps for every corrupted Templar whose face she managed to make out and commit to memory - a raw, smarting imprint burned into her brain during those fleeting moments when she froze in mid-fight and thought to look in her adversaries' eyes. She weeps and weeps, her heaving chest punctured by a multitude of barbed thorns; each thorn is a vision of what she has seen, during the Templars' assault on Haven, and in the dark future, when she and Dorian walked past the whimpering, bleeding prisoners whose bodies were being turned into sharp ruby shards with agonizing slowness, and long before that, during her awkward meeting with the clerics in Val Royeaux, when the mindless monsters with crystalline limbs and spines were still whole, still very much human, following their leader to certain doom. Who knows, maybe... If she had followed Cassandra's advice; if she had heeded to the laws of this world, where mages are not allowed to be in power anywhere except Tevinter; if she had fought back her impulse to protect her fellow spell-users; if she had decided to ally with the Templars instead of Fiona and her rebels... Perhaps those unfortunate men and women would have retained their humanity.  
  
She weeps for the Elder One - for Corypheus. He too, has been corrupted by the red crystals just like his followers, which must cause immeasurable physical pain to constantly ripple through his clawed limbs and his bared ribcage. But even greater pain has to come from his struggle to adjust to a world that he has woken up in, millennia after the golden age of the ancient Tevinter Imperium whose soil he once tred, as a proud priest of the Old Gods. This world is unfamiliar to him, a confounding puzzle that must sometimes overwhelm him as it does her, also a child of a different world. And as that pain and confusion have clearly turned Corypheus into a merciless tyrant, lashing out at what he does not understand and seeking to cast it into chains that he would pull at with an iron fist, Airanarie weeps for him out of fear of becoming someone akin to that herself. A tyrant - or a tyrant's minion, at the very least.   
  
That did almost happen to her, once. Once, she had an Elder One of her own to follow. Once, she had Venatori-like comrades to march along with on their way to conquer the world. Once, like that magister from Redcliffe, she wore the hooded robe of an order that had tried to turn her mind into a writhing nest of rustling, coiling, snake-like words - words that kept creeping into her ears, disguised as a golden promise to help her kind rise up to its former glory, and forge a shining new empire that would hug the ocean shores, and then ascend from the plane inhabited by cowering lesser peoples, achieving the godhood that had once been theirs, while the crumbling remnants of the imperfect mortal realm burned to cold cinders in their wake.  
  
Once, she was ready to believe that. The way Corypheus believes his own rambling, which Airanarie heard aplenty while he was struggling to separate her magical mark from her flesh, tying a thread to it like some unsophisticated Nord farmer would do when trying to pull out her neighbour's aching tooth (except that Corypheus' thread was woven out of flaring arcane energy). And the way the magister seemed to believe his master, at least up to the point when he saw that his plan had not worked, and promptly gave himself up, sighing listlessly and telling Airanarie that there was no point in further stretching out this 'charade'.   
  
So Airanarie weeps for the Venatori just as much as she does for the Red Templars. Oh, these wretched, misguided humans! It hurts to see them make the same mistakes as the High Elves of Tamriel. To see them let their pride for their homeland, for their incredible reserves of knowledge and magic, warp itself into a dark desire for domination and destruction.  
  
She weeps for Corypheus, whose loneliness in the new world is such a great burden to carry; and she weeps for Corypheus' puppet magister, whose twisted grief for his son touched her heart even at the most horrifying points of the dark future.   
  
And - much to her shame, for this goes so horribly against the mission she has been entrusted with, and the resolution she herself made when Cassandra first explained to her what was at stake... She also weeps for the Breach.  
  
She has not allowed herself to as much as think of this until now. She has been too afraid to give in to her urge to mourn the demonic portal that could have brought her back home again.  
  
She has been holding it back, in a stifled whimper pushed to the back of her throat, in a hissing breath of pain locked behind her gritted teeth - throughout all the time that has passed since that supposedly daring feat of hers. Since that moment when her forces, complete with a large group of mages that had graciously been provided by Grand Enchanter Fiona, returned to the funnel-shaped pit that had sucked in the Temple of Sacred Ashes, the veneration site of the (more or less) local Alessia; and stood in the shadow of the funnel's steep, ash-coloured sides, which had veins of venomous green and wounded red streaking through them; and focused all of their reserves of magicka... no, wait, mana... on Airanarie, charging up her mark with enough force to overpower the largest rift of them all. While Airanarie herself strode forth, the shimmering aura of the Breach making her clothes flap around her and her hair stand on end, as though she were facing a raging thunderstorm.  
  
She lingered before she managed to overcome the shooting pain in her arm and move her suddenly heavy, rusty joints to lift her hand and target the Breach, fusing it shut with an eruption of green light that knocked her back right into the steady, protective arms of Seeker Cassandra. She lingered - for the same reason she is now weeping.   
  
Because this was it. This was the final step. The final brick in the wall that has now shut her off from the world of Nirn. She may have been telling herself that she does not really miss her native Tamriel, that there is no point in wasting her energy on missing it, that surely, nobody back there even noticed the absence of an aloof former Thalmor battle mage, who had slipped out of the clutches of her own dark past and taken to living as a hermit in the middle of nowhere, pushing people away till there was no-one left to care for her being gone.  
  
But even though they may not care: Runil, Ondolemar, those random village folk that she would sometimes help out - even though they must have long forgotten her... She has not forgotten them. She has not forgotten Nirn.  
  
She has not forgotten the foaming cherry blossoms that would spill all along the shores of the Altmeri homeland in Alinor, the tender froth of white and pink petals meeting the pearly bubbles carried by the drowsy waves. She has not forgotten the intertwining tree tops of Valenwood, and the mighty graht trunks wrapped in bead-like spiral rows of golden windows. Or the bright flowering glades of Cyrodiil, tentatively bearing their first blossoms after the war; or the rugged azure mountain tops of Skyrim; or the enchanting landscapes of any other land she had a chance to visit, sent to all corners of the former Empire to 'spread the light of the Thalmor among lower beings' - and falling in love with these 'lower beings'' cultures instead.  
  
Thedas may be a wondrous, boundlessly beautiful world in its own right, with its snowy valleys and smoke-wreathed peaks and verdant woodlands and blazingly orange deserts... But Nirn is where she was born, where she truly belongs; losing it has been like losing part of herself.  
  
If she were not as... unmeric, not as invested into lesser races and their problems, she could have jumped into the Breach instead of closing it... Or she could still have closed it, but from the other side, like slamming a door behind her, and then set off to explore the Fade and find whichever crack between word that she had sprung out from, leaving those silly, magic-fearing humans - some of whom had once been ready to lock her in the stocks and label her a demon - to sort out their own mess. To fight the demons that might still be crawling through the leftover rifts; to try and foil the Elder One's plot to assassinate their Empress; to stall the impending onslaught of the corrupted army from the dark future.  
  
She could have done what the magister almost did: laid the whole world on the bloody altar of sacrifice, just to spare herself from the pain of loss.  
  
She could have - but she didn't. So all she can do now is weep. Weep hoarsely, shrilly, with a self-destructive abandon, submerging herself into the welcoming waters of the void.  
  
She does not know how much time she spends like this, splashing in nothingness, with even the echoes of her own shattered breaths sounding muffled and otherworldly. But sooner or later, her tears do run out, and she reawakens, shaken but slightly refreshed, some of the mountainous weight having rolled off her shoulders now that she has sobbed it all out.   
  
And when that moment comes, she draws herself to her feet, letting out a startled 'Oof' as her head spins a little. Biting down into her lips, she steadies herself, flexes her back, and passes her hand in front her face, squinting in the light of her own healing magic. When the stinging on the top of her head stops, she swallows, and snaps her fingers to summon her two favourite orbs of light. The blue of Clairvoyance, to track her path in the dark; and the red of Detect Life, to see if she can catch up with the Inquisition.  
  
For to the Inquisition she shall return - even though she already finds herself wincing at the thought that her survival (despite all odds; despite her own expectations!) will give the Thedosians even more cause to worship her like a goddess.  
  
They are not done with the Elder One. Not by far. And since she has so conveniently avoided dying and has not escaped back home, she might as well keep helping the silly humans.  
  
She did swear to.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Turns out I actually had a chapter half-written for this thing, which I rediscovered 4 months later and touched up a bit for posting. *sneezes on mothballs*
> 
> The plan is for the coming avalanche to sweep Alexius off into the same hole Airanarie fell in, and for the two of them to escape together, as per usual in my stories.

The lyrium sings. It always has. Like a gentle tingle at the back of your head, a sweet pain in your temple as if you have eaten so much of that fancy frozen dairy treat some Circles have their frost mages produce to sell to the Orlesians. As tempting as that treat, too. Tickling your tongue, sating you; sating you so well that sometimes you may turn wildly, viciously hungry if you stay without the song, and with time, that hunger may heighten into roaring pain that will kill your mind first, and your body, an agonizing eternity after. And even with your last dying breath, you will still be begging to taste the song again.  
  
That is the blue lyrium, though. With the red, the song is different. It burns and mesmerizes you like fire, licking at your mind in touches that are both biting and invigorating, far more so than the touches of a lover could ever be.  
  
The song rings louder, grips tighter. The hunger comes sooner. The pain roars louder. But you, in turn, are stronger. The hunger and the pain flow through you in scarlet rivers, and these rivers wash away your failing human flesh, replacing it with a resilient crystal shell. So that you become your own walking fortress; a fortress where the jagged parapets quiver with the war drums of the song.  
  
The song knows what it wants. It wants you to carry your new, fortress-like body through battle, heavy and unstoppable like a plough carving up a field of flesh. It wants you to keep moving, keep killing, keep painting your surroundings to match the impenetrable shell that you are now armoured in.  
  
Except... There is not really a you any longer. There is nothing but the song. The Song.  
  
It is the Song that rules the moving fortress; it is the Song that rings with joy when the spiked limbs burrow through leather and cloth and flesh till they reach the rib cage and bathe themselves in squelching blood, adding new splashes of saturated, ravishing scarlet to their crystal skin.  
  
It is the Song that, right now, is rearing high over the dappled pink snow drifts, preparing to rain its crimson wrath upon a puny, pathetic mage that has sprung up in the Song's path, his back turned towards a blazing wall of purple lightning.  
  
Wretched mortal. He is not blessed by the flaming touch of new lyrium; he is all flesh and no crystal. Any such beings encountered in this valley are supposed to die; such was the will of the Elder One. The master of the Song.  
  
The Elder One does not care about what happens to the unblessed, so long as he gets what he wants from one of them in particular. So the Song is free to destroy as many of them as it wants. And destroy it shall. For its hunger for more red never ceases.  
  
Soon left without the protection of the lightning wall, which dissolves with a low hiss not half a minute after it is erected, the mage gets cornered by two crystal vessels that carry the Song within them.  
  
One of them is smaller, nimbler, and is armed with a bow, which has already been put to good use, releasing an arrow that let out such a beautiful stream of blood from another mortal mage (that wretch is now trying to flee, having bought himself some time while the lightning barrier was still up; but the vessel's touch will be certain to drain him, sooner or later, and all that glorious redness will burst free from his veins and out into the cold and dark).  
  
Whereas the other vessel is massive as the jagged tip of a mountain peak that has torn itself off its base and is now walking free. During its transformation into a living phial for the Song's scorching red stream, it has let the chiselled ruby turrets grow taller than some of the trees upon the cliffside. And the Song finds ringing through this second crystallized husk to be particularly enjoyable.  
  
The small one may be quick on its feet, and may dance unstoppably through the snow as it pulls its bow string back again, with its pupils jerking back and forth amid the gnarly net of veins cast over its unblinking eyes, as it tries to focus on the mage (who makes it hard to take a clear aim, dart around as he does in a jittery blue shadow, speeding himself up by spellcraft). But the taller vessel has more of that raw, unrestrained force that the Song relishes in.  
  
So it is barely a loss when the mage zooms to the side, leaving the small husk gaping around blankly and pointing its arrowtip at nothing but swirls of glittering icy powder - and then materializes again where it least expected him to appear: behind its back, hands bristling with the glowing purple brambles of lightning, fingertips pressing hard into the pulsing flesh at the nape of the husk's neck, where the protective crystals are naught but than small, glazed ruby crumbs. It is barely a loss when the small husk groans, a tongue of smoke rolling out from its lopsided mouth, longer, darker, and far less tangible than its actual fleshy tongue, swollen and crystal-pierced. Barely a loss when, with that long, slithering smoke puff, the Song in its glassy red skull is smothered into silence; barely a loss when the once functional vessel rolls into the snow, empty save for the thrum of a residual echo.  
  
It is barely a loss: the Song has much higher hopes for the big husk, which has already seized the moment while the mage was distracted by looking down at the creature he's slain, and swept him off the mountain path's white carpet, claws of crimson locked tight round a fragile, squishable, unblessed body.  
  
In a single blink of a rounded, terrified mortal eye, the Song will command its vessel to snap those ludicrously brittle, twig-like bones into splinters, with a crack and a scream that will be as shrill as they are fleeting, gulped up by the night like there had never even been any other sounds here but the sighs of the swaying trees.  
  
And then, the vessel will rejoin the others - the ones that are still exploring the burning village at the bottom of the slope, allowed to roam free by the master of the Song. To roam, to stoke the flames, to search for more and more and more mortal blood to shower themselves in.  
  
The supply has been running somewhat low, for most of the mortals have left the village behind - and this vessel, this prized vessel, this victorious vessel, has learned where they have escaped. The two mages - the one wounded by the arrow and the one writhing in the crystal claws; as well as their horned companion - were but stragglers in a long  procession of mortals scurrying away from the Elder One's wrath along a pathway in the mountains. And as soon as the vessel is done with its puny prey, it will show this path to everyone else who bears the Song. And they will hunt, and chase, and devour, and turn the most suitable bodies into fertile, ploughed-up beds for planting new seeds of red lyrium.  
  
And perhaps, the Song will feel generous enough to actually share its blessings with a few captives, instead of just using them for harvesting. That horned giant will certainly prove quite formidable in battle if a new crimson fortress is raised on the foundation of his brawny muscle, and the Song takes control of his mind - rich in valuable reserves of cunning, which can be of much use if twisted to the proper purpose.  
  
But first, of course, the Song must dispose of this mage; he can't be allowed to skitter away and warn his unblessed kin, now can he? And look at him; he has even stopped struggling! A deathly calm cloaking him like an aura of snow, he is looking straight into the eyes of the Song's vessel, perfectly aware of his impending doom, and yet focusing not on the agony that is about to grind him up and spit him out, but on... on...  
  
What is this?! How is this possible?! The Song has run into an inexplicable bump, and skipped a note, and then another, and another, its commanding melody growing mangled and faltering, stifled by lapses of silence. This is not supposed to happen! Not with a complete vessel! At this stage of transformation, the pattern of the Song should not break; the vessel should not remember what came before the Song - it should not remember that it is human! Because it isn't, it isn't, it isn't!  
  
The Song chokes and spits in rage, mounting into a demanding scream - but the vessel is deaf to it. The vessel does not hear the Song's voice; instead, it hears another, from a long, long time ago. A time that should have forever been buried underneath the shards of red.  
  
With the Song locked out, most insolently, from its own domain, the vessel recollects a call that is soft and young, with a tiny lisp; and with it, comes the vision of little hands, curling into fists against a metal cuirass, smooth and glowing from a recent polish, with not a speck of red inside.  
  
'I will miss you, mommy!'  
  
'I will miss you too, bunny. But your dad will take good care of you, and I will be back as soon as the bad mages are all gone, and the good mages find a new home'.  
  
'How soon is "as soon"?'  
  
'I don't know, sweetheart. But the Lord Seeker says he has a plan, and I trust him'.  
  
The red mountain sways and groans, tears welling up in its bloodshot eyes - and the mage, still so far from being crushed, tilts his head up in bewilderment.  
  
The conniving wretch! Pretending not to understand what is going on - when it was he who disrupted the Song!  
  
He, with his final thoughts about a child of his own; with that longing for the touch of a familiar hand, for the assuring presence by his side, for the sound that he has heard grow from a baby's squeal to the strong voice of a young man, his father's pride and joy. A longing so powerful that it clashes against the Song, and pushes through it, and resonates within the vessel with all of the strength of red lyrium but none of its bloodthirsty drumming... And makes the vessel... assume things about itself.  
  
'I... I had a son too...' it says; and barring the bringing of the shards on the inside of its throat, which warp every sound it utters into a bestial growl, its voice comes out almost mournful.  
  
The Song will have none of that; the Song detests signs of human weakness within its perfect engines of destruction... But again, the vessel heeds not its commands. Slow and careful, suddenly considerate of the brittle mortal bones, it lowers the mage onto the snow, and steps back, lest the aura of the red lyrium spread through him.  
  
The mage staggers in place for a while, exhaling in pained puffs and muttering hoarsely; when he finally steadies himself, he measures the vessel up, a spark of interest bringing life to his heavy-lidded, bruised eyes, and rubs his temples in concentration.  
  
'You can read my thoughts...' he muses. 'It is the lyrium, isn't it? It has given you inhuman abilities... Funny... Never thought I would have it in me to be fascinated by anything again... Still...'  
  
His lips twist wryly.  
  
'I assume this little lapse is temporary, and you shall soon get back to squeezing the juices out of me? I had better get ready to bring you down. I have... people to protect. Surely, as... one monster parent to another... You would understand'.  
  
With that, he cracks his knuckles, new threads of magic squeezing through between his clenched fingers, white and purple and vivid lilac.  
  
The Song chimes up, hopeful. The mortal is right: this weakness will not taint the vessel forever; it had better be!  And the moment the Song regains control, the mage is finished! Finished!  
  
The Song roars a battle cry, yearning for blood - but again, finds itself smothered. This time, by a colossal white wave that rushes, thundering, along the slope ahead, set off by a trebuchet blast from the valley, and, before either the vessel or the mage can make but the smallest step to the side, catches them both into its stifling grasp, and carries them off in a dizzying whirlwind, down and down, somewhere deep and murky-blue, where there is no light, no air, no space to move... No Song to heed.


	7. Illustration: Melting Hearts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As ex-Thalmor and ex-Venatori respectively, Airanarie and Alexius will have plenty of opportunity for bonding as they make their way through that blizzard.


End file.
